Expedition 1
Expedition 1 was the first long term crewed expedition to the Skylab Workshop Station, which began on Sunday, October 14, 1979 and ended on Saturday, November 24, 1979. It was commanded by Thomlo Kerman, on his second spaceflight (after flying on Apollo Exploration Mission-2 in 1974), and was serving as the Chief Astronaut at the time. Thomlo was responsible for fitting the interior of the Workshop Segment, and recieved an award by NASA on behalf of SSPX. This mission began an era of uninterupted kerbal presence in space, which continues to this day. Crew Most of the forty crew on this mission were volunteer kerbals, but a few veteran spaceflight members included Chris A. Hadfield, Nicole Stott, Pablo Mora, and siblings Thomlo, Shay, Esteven and Maxy Kerman. The backup crewmembers where Raphael J. Chryslar, and Jedediah, Gwenthis, Lucy, Thomberry and Bob Kerman. Background and Objectives The mission's focus was to set up the installation of equipment and activate the newly built and launched Skylab Workshop Station to full science capability. Pressure was high by mission managers and senior agency officials to get the station up to the status of the now-disgraced Odyssey and hopefully exceed its expectations. Skylab II was designed to "bring science 'Sky High' " — meaning that the station must provide revolutionary space science innovations for the benefit of humanity, and continue to excel new discoveries in technology development for many years to come. A lot of equipment on-board in storage containers has never been tested in space before, including standard desktop computers and hard drives, Wi-Fi, etc. and it was not known if these machines will work effectivly in weightlessness, and being away from Earth and thus the high-speed internet traffic. The Expedition 1 crew's job was to overcome those obstacles and fears, and get the station to exceptional operational status by the time the mission is complete. Raphael J. Chryslar was nervous at that point, knowing that a failure and tragic fate like Odyssey would send him into an unavoidable public relations disaster. Thankfully against all the odds, his Space Station exceed all expectations and impressed all the officials and the public; even Gene Kranz was blown 'out of the water'. Launch The Expedition One crew launched aboard various rockets: * Saturn V with the station, carried 10 crew including Thomlo and Maxy Kerman into orbit on October 9th. * Soyuz 1A-1 — an experimental grand-predesseor to the Soyuz-Laptop, ferried up 17 crew, launched on October 12th. * Soyuz-1B — another experimental 'disposable' Soyuz passenger craft delivered the rest of the crew on October 14, totalling up to 40 individuals. While most of the crew returned to Earth by December 1979, a few individuals stayed on for up to four years long after the expedtion was concluded, and returned to Earth in 1983 aboard STS-2 and STS-4. Mission Highlights The slogan for the mission was 'Rise of the Computers' — meaning the advancement of computer equipment and science for the first time in space. After a week commencing the installation of inteior equipment, the crew realized that there were short of computers and bookshelves to be fitted, as the Workshop Segment turned out to be larger in utilizable surfaces than expected. They radioed to mission control requesting a quick re-supply vehicle to be sent to the station as quickly as possible. Six days later on October 22, a Delta IV M+2 rocket (carrying a disposable storage shipping container filled with more computers, etc) blasted into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center and arrived at Skylab 7 hours later. Once it docked with the forward docking port, the crew quickly emptied it of its cargo to resume fitting operations. The empty unmanned vehicle was filled with trash, undocked and blew up in the Earth's atmosphere fourteen hours later. The expedition one crew were mostly engineers and mechanics who had experience in the assembly industry (such as furniture manufacturing, home improvement, and computer assembly). Assembling furniture and setting up computer desks in weightlessness proved to be a challenge, and as ironically being way easier to move heavy items around and into position for connecting, screws and bolts kept floating off. To resolve this, the crew used magnets to secure all non-attached small parts and nuts-and-bolts packages, to prevent them from floating away and going missing. Threading cables for computers and hard drives was an easy task, and care was taken to ensure they didn't get tangled. The whole job was percieved as both entertaining and enjoyable, and Thomlo was amused at seeing the computers and other parts freely floating while awaiting installation. After three more days of work, all the storage containers, furniture, desks, bookshelves, computers, wires, cables, plumbing and chairs were installed thoightout the space station. External payloads and experiments such as fuel cells, Wi-Fi antenna and the Magnetometer boom (that extends from the back of the workshop) were installed in seven spacewalks, mostly conducted by Thomlo Kerman. Another five days were required to activate and set-up the on-board science systems, computer software, machines, hard drives and internet processing equipment, before the station oficially was announced to be fully up and ready for service. The crew held a press teleconference in the communal meeting module on November 7, 1979. At that point, everyone rejoiced and celebrated, especially J. Chryslar - knowing that his dream not only came true, but also highly successful. It wasn't until January 21, 1980 that the magnetometer boom was deployed from the Workshop Segment, as it wasn't needed yet until the manufactuer and the contracting university were ready to begin its science operations. Next mission Expedition One ended on November 24th 1979, and Expedition Two commended the same day at 12:00 pm EST with the arrival of Soyuz-Classic SC-1, and later the Soyuz 1A-2 and the Cygnus spacecraft. Its mission was dubbed "Refrigeration Pizza Night", where its focus was to deliver the four large refrigerators up to the station, a new dining desk, and of course the first frozen meal aboard — space pizzas.